DLO-230: A Finger Down the spine

**John Bowers** (0:02)
Astonishing Legends Network The views and opinions expressed by hosts and listeners on the Astonishing Dead Letter Office are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Astonishing Legends Productions, the Astonishing Legends Network, or any affiliated entities or guests.

**Forrest Burgess** (0:37)
When something unexplainable happens to you, it can make you feel isolated or alone. But trust us, you're not.
For over a decade, you've been sending your strange stories to Astonishing Legends. And now it's time for our fellow legenders to hear them too.
Join us weekly in Blanket Forteana as we dig through your intriguing messages to the Astonishing Dead Letter Office.

**John Bowers** (1:11)
Tonight's episode, A Finger Down the Spine.

**Scott Philbrook** (1:17)
So there's a peninsula in Northern Michigan. I didn't know this was there until we got this letter. It was interesting to look this up on Google Maps, my favorite thing or Google Earth. It's only about three miles wide and it runs 19 miles straight out into Grand Traverse Bay.
But this peninsula goes out far enough that it splits the bay into two arms. It's Old Mission Peninsula. Peninsula Drive has cherry orchards, 10 or 11 vineyards now, and a little white lighthouse at the very tip that sits right about on the 45th parallel halfway between the equator and the North Pole. People honeymoon there. If you look it up online, it looks stunning, just gorgeous country.

**Forrest Burgess** (1:55)
I just heard Neil deGrasse Tyson remind us what honeymoon means. Do you know what that means? Is that bad?

**Scott Philbrook** (2:01)
No, I don't actually.

**Forrest Burgess** (2:02)
This is what he said during the month of June, the moon often appears to have an amber color to it, the color of honey. A lot of folks get married in June, therefore, they go on a honeymoon.

**Scott Philbrook** (2:14)
Very nice.

**Forrest Burgess** (2:15)
Well, apparently this place, it's one of those rare places where the postcards undersell it. It's quite spectacular. And just what you described there, as far as the layout, the geography is unusual and special in a way. But here's the thing about a stretch of land that's been beautiful and a little out of the way for 150 years at least, the old houses on it have had a long time to collect stories, especially those big summer homes.

**Scott Philbrook** (2:43)
Yes. Well, there is one in particular at the heart of tonight's dead letter. It grew up out of an 1860s farmstead, then a wealthy couple from Chicago rebuilt it in the 1920s as their summer place. Years later, it became a restaurant, well, two restaurants really, under one roof and one staff, fine dining in the front, and then in the back, there's a pub where the working part of the property used to be.

**Forrest Burgess** (3:07)
The staff all end up telling a version of the same story.

**Scott Philbrook** (3:11)
Every one of them going back decades, a name comes up, the owner's wife, the locals call her Genevieve, and depending on who's telling it, she's playful, or she's lonely, or she's something a good deal less friendly than that.

**Forrest Burgess** (3:25)
There's a lot of interesting things you dug up as well about the veracity of some parts of the story.

**Scott Philbrook** (3:31)
Yes, yes.

**Forrest Burgess** (3:32)
Yeah, but tonight we're going to start off by talking about the letter that comes from a man who sat on this story for years.
And he first left it on our voicemail for a Halloween show a while back, and then he finally decided to write it down and send that in. But this is why we do the DLO, so we can get to all those folk stories, so your efforts were not in vain.

**Scott Philbrook** (3:53)
We've got a lot of great stories.

**Forrest Burgess** (3:54)
Yeah, and your experiences will be shared, because that's one thing that I take a lot of enjoyment and the satisfaction in that people who have other where things happen to them now know like, well, I'm not the only one, and I worked here and you don't have to be alone anymore.
But when it comes down to this story, our author here was 19 the summer it happened, and he was home from his freshman year of college, working as a dishwasher and busboy for Fast Cash and Good Summer Job, and absolutely certain that none of this ghost business was real. But as we often say, the ghost don't always care if you think they're real or not. They're just there. It's like you don't care. Why would you care if they believed in you? You know you're real, probably.